Of course, the fragments do not have to be as old as Abraham for the book of Abraham and its illustrations to be authentic. Ancient records are often transmitted as copies or as copies of copies. The record of Abraham could have been edited or redacted by later writers much as the Book of Mormon prophet-historians Mormon and Moroni revised the writings of earlier peoples. Moreover, documents initially composed for one context can be repackaged for another context or purpose. Illustrations once connected with Abraham could have either drifted or been dislodged from their original context and reinterpreted hundreds of years later in terms of burial practices in a later period of Egyptian history. The opposite could also be true: illustrations with no clear connection to Abraham anciently could, by revelation, shed light on the life and teachings of this prophetic figure.

I wonder if these guys actually get a bit aroused when they come up with gems like the one above...

Of course, the fragments do not have to be as old as Abraham for the book of Abraham and its illustrations to be authentic. Ancient records are often transmitted as copies or as copies of copies. The record of Abraham could have been edited or redacted by later writers much as the Book of Mormon prophet-historians Mormon and Moroni revised the writings of earlier peoples. Moreover, documents initially composed for one context can be repackaged for another context or purpose. Illustrations once connected with Abraham could have either drifted or been dislodged from their original context and reinterpreted hundreds of years later in terms of burial practices in a later period of Egyptian history. The opposite could also be true: illustrations with no clear connection to Abraham anciently could, by revelation, shed light on the life and teachings of this prophetic figure.

I wonder if these guys actually get a bit aroused when they come up with gems like the one above...

- Doc

In other words, its always authentic. Even if fiction, if it teaches us something that is true, its authentic. It;s a nice piece of psychology for a testimony......

_________________Science is not reliable because it provides certainty. It is reliable because it provides us with the best answers we have at present. And it is reliability we need, not certainty. The most credible answers are the ones given by science, because science is the search for the most credible answers available, not for answers pretending to certainty. Carlo Rovelli

Of course, the fragments do not have to be as old as Abraham for the book of Abraham and its illustrations to be authentic. Ancient records are often transmitted as copies or as copies of copies. - Doc

Sent via Celestial fax or perhaps by the venerated Intergalactic Postal Service.

My thanks to Johannes and Symmachus for surpassing the learned discussion of the Interpreter with your erudition, logic, and wit. I agree with Symmachus regarding the source of Nephi’s knowledge of Egyptian. Certainly the family of Lehi was not a scribal family, but there still was a Josephite Egyptian scribal tradition that the Lehites appropriated/emulated thanks in part to the acquisition of the plates of brass.

You're all too kind. I am likely to be unavailable over the next few days, but I will respond as soon as I have time. I'm about to catch a plane to Riyadh to meet with King Salman and Elder Jeff Lindsay. I am not at liberty to disclose what we will be talking about, but suffice it to say that it would make many anti-Mormons feel pretty foolish if they knew.

I unexpectedly have a bit of time spare, so here is the skeleton of my next argument:

Nephi wrote in Greek. Nibley and Symmachus have established that Lehi's family knew the language. Note also the Greek names in the Book of Mormon onomasticon.

Objections:

1. Why would N have used Greek for the small plates? We know that he was acquainted with Greek as a scriptual language from the Book of Mormon text. He incorporated a reading from LXX Isaiah at 2 Ne. 12.16 (and doubtless other places). He must have got this from the Lord or an angel.

2. What about the reference to Egyptian in the colophon of 1 Nephi? Provisional theory: "Egyptian" was the ghost committee's misreading for something else. AIΓYΠTIΩN (of the Egyptians) could easily be mistaken for AIΓYΠIΩN (of the vultures). There are many plausible reasons why Nephi would have claimed to speak "the language of vultures".

This will all need to be written up, of course, but I think I've cracked the mystery.

I think you may be on to something, Johannes. It occurs to me that Lehi's theory of the unity of opposites that he expounds at the beginning of 2 Nephi is exactly the sort of material we find among the pre-Socratics. It is strikingly similar to that of Heraclitus; granted, he was a few generations later, but he was from Ephesus, which Lehi doubtless visited on one of his many business trips, probably with Solon and Thales. We cannot rule out the possibility that there was continued contact with the Ionian philosophers, and possibly the Eleatics as well.

I'm not sure I'm fully persuaded yet, and it seems too far to abandon the unmistakable resonances of Egypt among the Nephite scribal elite, but there is certainly more that needs to be done on the Greek problem in the Book of Mormon. The Jaredites, as I've suggested in this forum in some detail, likely rode the same wave of migration that brought the earliest Indo-Europeans to Greece, whose language has survived in the specimens of Linear B (was Jaredite Linear A?). I've been working on a theory that some of the Jaredites actually returned to the Old World and settled at Troy, but that's for another thread.

Still, that leaves so much unanswered, and I would humbly submit that "Greco-Egyptian" is a pre-Alexandrian category that we should be paying much more attention to in understanding this problem in the Book of Mormon. Your work is pointing the way towards a solution.

_________________"As to any slivers of light or any particles of darkness of the past, we forget about them."

Let us start with 1 Nephi 1.2 (I have naturally taken the text from the 1830 Palmyra edition of the Book of Mormon):

Quote:

....yea, I make a record in the language of my father, which consists of the learning of the Jews and the language of the Egyptians.

Your argument is that the "language" of the Egyptians means just that - Ancient Egyptian - and that the learning of the Jews is the content that was expressed in that language.

I want to argue that there is no reason why Nephi would have taken it into his head to compose the Small Plates in Ancient Egyptian. It just makes no sense. And this is Nephi talking - Mormon did not abridge this part of the Nephite record, so we can have a high degree of confidence that we are reading the words of Nephi ben Lehi himself, written within a generation of 600 BC.

So why does Nephi bring up Egyptian? What did he mean by the term? Apostates and anti-Mormons would doubtless say that the text was written by Brother Joseph (as if he could do such a thing in 60 days!), and that Joseph was influenced by later Euro-American fantasies about Egypt as a land of mysteries. But such an explanation is obviously not open to faithful Latter-day Saint scholars. Nephi was not an Orientalist, and "Egypt" to a Judahite in 600 BC did not signify esoteric exoticism. It signified slavery and oppression. The early prophets (Hosea, Amos, Micah and Nephi's beloved Isaiah) repeatedly reference the narrative of Israel's liberation from Egypt in the exodus as a programmatic model for YHWH's dealings with his chosen people. Jeremiah, who we know was a contemporary of Nephi, incorporated the same theme into his preaching.

I suggest, then, that "Egypt" in the Book of Mormon text signifies oppressive, idolatrous enemies, from whom God's remnant people look to be delivered by his divine hand. It is plausible that the members of the Lehite colony used the terms "Egypt" and "Egyptians" to denote the native peoples of the Americas. So the "language of the Egyptians" that Nephi employed would have been the language of the Maya - a language which he and his family would have had to learn on arriving in the New WOrld, and which would no doubt have become more familiar to him over time than his native Hebrew.

It makes perfect sense . that was the language that the Brass Plates were written in Egyptain His very name was Egyptian . Think of educated Hindi in India today . They often speak and certainly write in English routinely . Paticularly if they are writting at lenght about an English text.

In support of Johannes’ point, recall that Joseph Smith mistook a Greek psalter for Egyptian. Maybe the Book of Mormon was written in a kind of proto-Coptic?

I think you might be on to something here. Reformed Egyptian is often compared to Demotic Egyptian. Demotic Egyptian is, as I'm sure everyone knows, a descriptor for a script rather than a language per se. The language was Late Egyptian, and the next phase of that was Coptic. In fact, those who have "done their homework," as one geenius has, will no doubt have noticed that the language of Demotic basically is Coptic, and Coptic itself is but Late Egyptian written in the Greek script (or Reformed Greek, if you will, since it contains extra characters adapted from Demotic), and with a very substantial vocabulary of loanwords from Greek.

In short, Reformed Egyptian=Demotic= Coptic. That could very well describe the learned language of the Nephite scribes.

In suggesting these new possibilities, you and Johannes have inaugurated new approaches to the Book of Mormon.

_________________"As to any slivers of light or any particles of darkness of the past, we forget about them."